I recently found myself engaged in an open-mic session on the “Standing for Truth” YouTube channel, a platform where young Earth (or Young-age) creationists often clash conventional scientific perspectives. My participation was not by accident but by a deliberate choice. I had come to hear the young-age arguments for why polystrate trees should be considered evidence for an young-earth and a Global Flood in particular. But it was a offhand comment by special guest Paul Price about the preservation of footprints in the fossil record that stirred me to join the stream and comment. This was a topic I had explored in depth and thus felt I could shed some light on.
For about 10 minutes I engaged with SFT guests Paul Price and Ian Juby, both of whom brought a creationist perspective to the table. Despite our differing views, the dialogue was respectful.. Ian, in particular, impressed me with his genuine enthusiasm for fossils and geological formations. Our exchange was a reminder that beneath our different interpretations of Genesis, there’s a shared fascination with the natural world.
You can watch our conversation and see my extended thoughts and additional challenges from particular fossil location in the video linked below.
My argument centered around fossil footprints and their implications for the global flood model. I recounted a few of the thousands of examples of preserved footprints in the geological column, each telling a story of a complex and long geological history. These footprints, found in locations as diverse as Death Valley and the Joggins Fossil Cliffs, in my mind, challenge the young Earth creationist narrative by their very existence.
In my discussion with Paul and Ian, I attempted to demystify the process of footprint preservation. Contrary to the belief that such occurrences require catastrophic events like a global flood, I presented evidence of footprints preserved in conditions far removed from biblical or even small local floods. From the arid deserts of Death Valley, to fossilized sand dunes of South Africa, where human and animal tracks have been immortalized in stone, the evidence against a simplistic singular global flood is compelling.
These footprints serve as witnesses to the Earth’s dynamic history, a history that unfolds over millions of years, not the thousands proposed by young Earth creationists. The preservation of footprints, both human and animal, in sediments without the need for a global or even local flood, speaks to the incredible diversity and complexity of Earth’s geological processes.
Through the discussion on SFT channel, it became clear—well it reminded me again at least—that the debate was not just about footprints or polystrate trees. It was about how we interpret the world around us, the methodologies we trust, and the evidence we choose to accept or ignore including evidence from holy scriptures. The young Earth creationist model, while rooted in a literal interpretation of biblical texts, struggles to accommodate the vast body of scientific evidence that points to an ancient Earth sculpted by slow, incremental changes over eons.
Naturalis Historia 
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Joel, I’m glad you got to participate in the dialog and video. I wish I had known about it earlier and perhaps had a chance to participate too, since as you know I’ve spent many years working and writing on fossil tracks and addressing creationist claims about them (including Juby’s). For any readers not familiar with my writings on these issues, my website is http://paleo.cc/paluxy.htm
I especially appreciate your clarifications that billions of tracks have been preserved without needing a worldwide flood (or any flood), and your cordial tone while doing so. However, to be frank I think you may have been too kind to the YECs when you seemed to allow that billions of dinosaur tracks could have been formed during Noah’s Flood, if there was a lot of back and forth water action, and if an unusually high percentage (about 10%) of the tracks were preserved. As I see it, these are not only implausible, but impossibly big “ifs”. I suspect you agree, but am not sure Price of Juby grasped that, or all the reasons why. One that I would stress is that billions of dinosaur tracks are in Mesozoic strata, even though many YECs say the peak of the Flood (when the entire world was covered with water) was in the Mesozoic. Perhaps Juby or Price try to place the Flood somewhere else. But that’s of little help, since most of the fossil record is full of tracks and other trace fossils.
No appeals to back-and-forth wave action or “lulls” in the Flood waters help them either, since it would not provide nearly enough sites or horizons for all the tracks, nor the right conditions for their formation and preservation, besides the likelihood that most of the animals would have drowned in the early stages of the Flood. You did a great job of showing why a violent Global Flood (nor any flood) is not needed for print preservation, I’m not sure the YECs fully grasped that the conditions usually needed for print preservation are the very opposite: relatively calm, low-energy environments. In short, YECs have too little time, too few animals, and the wrong conditions to produce all the tracks we find, or anything close.
Again, I realize that time was limited, but another relevant point largely ignored by YECs is that that the vast majority of dinosaur tracks indicate animals walking about normally, not laboring and staggering after weeks of treading water, or trying to outrun onrushing flood waters.
Yet another serious problem for YECs is that tracks and other trace fossils show patterns of succession that closely match the succession of body fossils. YECs usually ignore this too, which is not surprising, since they have no logical explanation for it, while it fits perfectly with mainstream geology and evolution. Along these lines, they cannot explain why we don’t find any convincing tracks of large modern mammals anywhere in the Mesozoic (when we should find similar numbers as dinosaur tracks) since they were all supposedly living at the same time before the Flood, and many are at least as agile and swim-capable as dinosaurs.
Even the handful of alleged “out of place” tracks promoted by Juby and a handful of other YECs are far from convincing. Juby, Carl Baugh, Don Patton, and associates are still promoting the Paluxy “man tracks”, even though I and others thoroughly refuted them in the mid-1980’s, and even though no major YEC groups still endorse them. Most of the alleged human tracks are forms of infilled, mud-collapsed, or eroded metatarsal (heel-impressed) dinosaur tracks, with a smaller number being selectively highlighted carvings and erosional features. Juby argues otherwise, largely based on claims by Carl Baugh, who he praises, despite Baugh’s long history of false and dubious claims on many matters, including his own credentials.
Juby and few other YECs also insist that there are real, natural-looking “human” tracks in Paleozoic rocks of Kentucky. However, these too are not supported by any major creationist groups, and entail serious problems. As I will show in an upcoming article, most look very unnatural and do not occur in normal striding sequences. That is because they are actually native American petroglyphs (rock carvings), which occur among many other obvious petroglyphs (symbols, animal track carvings, etc.). This relates to another problem with Juby’s claims, which is that he typically makes them in his own videos and web site commentaries, rather than thorough and rigorous academic papers, even in the creationist press. Price has written a number of articles for CMI, but he seems to have done little if any field work. While implying that your track arguments depend on old-earth assumption, he seems to miss that an old earth is not based on assumptions, but many compelling lines of empirical evidence, and that without the long ages, there is no way to explain the massive numbers of tracks and track sites in the fossil record, or their order.
You note that you enjoy Juby’s enthusiasm for fossils and tracks, but I for one have not enjoyed the many demonstrably false claims he has made, nor his often ridiculing tone toward mainstream workers. Even so, I was glad to see that he nodded a lot as you were speaking, and that unlike Price, he seemed receptive to some of your points (more so than I have experienced in the past). Hopefully your careful presentation of important points about track evidence (with good examples from the field) may prompt him to start tempering his approach and claims, if not reconsider his overall YEC views. Speaking of which, it bothered me that during the dialog, Price repeatedly implied that the “Biblical view” was the same as the YEC view. I surmise that Juby feels the same, which may make it hard for either to question let alone abandon YECism. Even so, hopefully with time they may begin to open their minds further, and at least on the issue of fossil tracks, begin to realize that not only does the evidence not support their YE claims and views, but strongly challenges them.
I hope readers will check out your other good articles dealing with fossil tracks, as well as my Paluxy page (noted earlier), and my article “Fossil Tracks and Other Trace Fossils Refute Flood Geology” that addresses yet additional evidence refuting YEC claims on fossil tracks and earth history in general, at: http://paleo.cc/ce/tracefos.htm
Thank you.
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Joel, I’m glad you got to participate in the dialog and video. I wish I had known about it earlier and perhaps had a chance to participate too, since as you know I’ve spent many years working and writing on fossil tracks and addressing creationist claims about them (including Juby’s). For any readers not familiar with my writings on these issues, my website is http://paleo.cc/paluxy.htm
I especially appreciate your clarifications that billions of tracks have been preserved without needing a worldwide flood (or any flood), and your cordial tone while doing so. However, to be frank I think you may have been too kind to the YECs when you seemed to allow that billions of dinosaur tracks could have been formed during Noah’s Flood, if there was a lot of back and forth water action, and if an unusually high percentage (about 10%) of the tracks were preserved. As I see it, these are not only implausible, but impossibly big “ifs”. I suspect you agree, but am not sure Price of Juby grasped that, or all the reasons why. One that I would stress is that billions of dinosaur tracks are in Mesozoic strata, even though many YECs say the peak of the Flood (when the entire world was covered with water) was in the Mesozoic. Perhaps Juby or Price try to place the Flood somewhere else. But that’s of little help, since most of the fossil record is full of tracks and other trace fossils.
No appeals to back-and-forth wave action or “lulls” in the Flood waters help them either, since it would not provide nearly enough sites or horizons for all the tracks, nor the right conditions for their formation and preservation, besides the likelihood that most of the animals would have drowned in the early stages of the Flood. You did a great job of showing why a violent Global Flood (nor any flood) is not needed for print preservation, I’m not sure the YECs fully grasped that the conditions usually needed for print preservation are the very opposite: relatively calm, low-energy environments. In short, YECs have too little time, too few animals, and the wrong conditions to produce all the tracks we find, or anything close.
Again, I realize that time was limited, but another relevant point largely ignored by YECs is that that the vast majority of dinosaur tracks indicate animals walking about normally, not laboring and staggering after weeks of treading water, or trying to outrun onrushing flood waters. Another serious problem for YECs is that tracks and other trace fossils show patterns of succession that closely match the succession of body fossils. YECs usually ignore this too, which is not surprising, since they have no logical explanation for it, while it fits perfectly with mainstream geology and evolution. Likewise,. they cannot explain why we don’t find any convincing tracks of large modern mammals anywhere in the Mesozoic (when we should find similar numbers as dinosaur tracks) since they were all supposedly living at the same time before the Flood, and many are at least as agile and swim-capable as dinosaurs.
Even the handful of alleged “out of place” tracks promoted by Juby and a handful of other YECs are far from convincing. Juby, Carl Baugh, Don Patton, and associates are still promoting the Paluxy “man tracks”, even though I and others thoroughly refuted them in the mid-1980’s, and even though no major YEC groups still endorse them. Most of the alleged human tracks are forms of infilled, mud-collapsed, or eroded metatarsal (heel-impressed) dinosaur tracks, with a smaller number carvings and erosional features. Juby argues otherwise largely based on claims by Carl Baugh, who he praises, despite Baugh’s long history of false and dubious claims on many matters, including his own credentials.
Juby and few other YECs also insist that there are real, natural-looking “human” tracks in Paleozoic rocks of Kentucky. However, these too are not supported by any major creationist groups, and entail serious problems. As I will show in an upcoming article, most look very unnatural and do not occur in normal striding sequences. That is because they are actually native American petroglyphs (rock carvings), which occur among many other obvious petroglyphs (symbols, animal track carvings, etc.). This relates to another problem with Juby’s claims, which is that he typically makes them in his s videos and web site commentaries, rather than thorough and rigorous academic papers, even in the creationist press. Price has written a number of articles for CMI, but he seems to have done little if any field work. While implying that your arguments depend on old-earth assumption, he seems to miss that an old earth is on many compelling lines of empirical evidence, and that without the long ages, there is no way to explain the massive numbers of tracks and track sites in the fossil record, or their order.
You note that you enjoy Juby’s enthusiasm for fossils and tracks, but I for one have not enjoyed the many demonstrably false claims he has made, nor his often ridiculing tone toward mainstream workers. Even so, I was glad to see that Juby nodded a lot as you were speaking, and that unlike Price, he seemed receptive to some of your points, more so than I or others have experienced in the past. Hopefully your careful presentation of several important aspects of the track evidence may prompt him to start tempering his approach and claims, if not reconsider his overall YEC views. Speaking of which, it bothered me that during the dialog, Price repeatedly implied that the “Biblical view” was the same as the YEC view. I surmise that Juby feels the same, which may make it hard for either to question let alone abandon YECism. Even so, hopefully with time they may begin to open their mind to contrary evidence, and at least on the issue of fossil tracks, begin to realize that not only does the evidence not support their YE claims and views, but strongly challenges them.
I hope readers will check out your other good articles dealing with fossil tracks, as well as my Paluxy page (noted earlier), and my article “Fossil Tracks and Other Trace Fossils Refute Flood Geology” that addresses yet additional evidence refuting YEC claims on fossil tracks and earth history in general, at: http://paleo.cc/ce/tracefos.htm
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For what it’s worth, I tried to again to post the comments the old way (just using my email address, name, and website). This time I did not get any error message, but neither did the comments appear to post, nor did I get any message saying they were being reviewed first, o again, I’m not sure what is going on.
By the way, I’m going to be going to the Columbus Rock and fossil show tomorrow morning, and will be hanging with Joe Meeker, a buddy of mine who helped me with track work in 2022, and who is building a fossil museum near Columbus. I’m wondering if you might want to meet at the show and perhaps have lunch, or if that doesn’t work out, maybe meet for dinner or to chat on my way back to Cleveland. I’d love to show you some of my photos and videos from my track work the last couple years. I didn’t mention it in the comments, but with the help of many volunteers, I found, mapped, and molded hundreds of new tracks, including ones appearing to indicate new types of dinosaurs, new behaviors, and even the remains of a possible dinosaur nest. Thanks! Glen
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Glen, I found all three in the spam folder and approved them. I’ll delete two of those copies now and your follow-up since its really a message to me. I’ll email you.
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Thanks Joel!
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My favorite track site that YEC cannot explain is in Utah. There are numerous mapped and described dinosaur tracks in the same beds where there are the root systems of many Cretaceous trees that clearly grew in place. They even have an example with desiccation cracks. No one can claim that these cracks formed by syneresis. A short description with figures is here: https://jesusinhistoryandscience.com/?p=2477 I will keep posting this example in various ways until someone can give me a flood geology explanation that makes sense.
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Your patience astounds me. While I’m sure it will be credited in your favor, I’m not sure it does much good.
I consider persuasion an illusion. The only true persuader is the natural consequent pain of one’s own actions and choices. Sadly, when it comes to invalid scriptural interpretation, generations must suffer before all adherents change their minds for the better. Further, there are very few examples of such that go away entirely.
Of course, my own experience colors my assessment. I’ve opposed the varieties of YEC for over half a century, and I’ve seen no firsthand evidence of positive results. I mostly ignore the issue now. (You are so patient with it, I still pay attention to you.)
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